


on coming home, after a long winter

by pennyofthewild



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 00:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3229319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennyofthewild/pseuds/pennyofthewild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time waits for no man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on coming home, after a long winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phosphorite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phosphorite/gifts).



> This ended up a lot less shippy than I intended it to be.  
> Oh, well.
> 
> The first person to correctly guess which Murakami novel this story is ~~a rip-off of~~ inspired by will receive a  >500 word drabble on the pairing of their choice.
> 
>  **Edit:** in the wake of author reveals!!!!! I've put in my dedication (to the Bestest Senpai) (because, you know, if I'd put it in beforehand I would've given myself away...). Also, in the most epic fail in the history of epic fails, this story underwent the BIGGEST EDIT EVER in the middle of the guessing period: the addition of a paragraph, which I'd apparently accidentally deleted and never put back in. 
> 
> I am such a fail.

As Aomine sat in the plane on the way back to Tokyo – the seat was a business-class window seat and the plane was a Boeing 747 – his mind a swirling mess of _thoughts_ and _feelings_ and _mostly regrets_ , two realizations kept coming back to him, and the two realizations were:

1)      Sometimes, life throws the most unexpected people unstoppable curveballs.

2)      Sometimes, even those most qualified fail to catch those balls, and end up being hit in the face.  

There was no point in thinking of _what could have been_ , when _what has been_  was set in solid, unshakeable concrete – then, what comfort would there be in _ifs_ or _buts_ or _maybes_?

 There was a magazine in the pocket of the seat in front of him, tucked behind the safety manual, and he picked it up, again, despite having returned it not ten minutes ago, and idly flipped through it, not really seeing the words, a futile diversion.

Unsurprisingly, none of the headlines caught his eye, and he put the magazine back.

The feeling of being caged in came back full force, an almost tangible heaviness that settled on his chest and legs and arms. He felt as though the words were echoing within the confines of his skull:

RETIRED AT THIRTY-TWO

RETIRED

THIRTY-TWO

RETIRED RETIRED RETIRED

A shame, his agent had said, to lose such a promising player, when, as far as anyone was concerned, Aomine should’ve played longer – an indeterminable amount of time longer – at least as long as Robert Parish. He should have turned in his jersey well into the fifth decade of his life, hair greying at his temples and wrinkles settling in around the corners of his mouth.

But bodies are not infallible, and Aomine’s could no longer take the strain he placed on it, day in and day out. Not when his level of play was so far _above_ and _beyond_ everyone else’s, the exertion required almost incomparable. First, there was a knee injury. Then an arm. The other knee. He lost count of the number of hospital visits he made over the last two-three years, as if the collective wear-and-tear had accumulated – slowly, at first, snowballing with repeated abuse.

If he wanted to keep playing, his doctor had said, he needed to stop playing so hard.

His options, Aomine thought, giving himself up, wholly, to punishing introspection, were:

1)      Coach a basketball team, presumably at the high-school level, like Harasawa or any of the other Kiseki coaches

2)      Not coach basketball, and instead grow old huddled underneath the covers on his bed, perhaps mummify himself through sheer force of will

Either way, he would be moving back in with his parents, to his attic bedroom: dusty curtains, ancient desktop computer, basketball posters on the walls, gravure magazines – his favorites were the ones in which Horihata Mai featured prominently, of course – underneath the bed – a shrine to the boy Aomine used to be.

The middle-aged businessman in the seat next to Aomine was very much asleep, as were the majority of the cabin’s occupants – aside from a passenger or two watching movies – and so the low, choked noise that escaped Aomine’s throat went unnoticed.

He stifled it with his fist, anyway.

 

 

 

The weekend following his arrival in Tokyo found Aomine collapsed on the couch in his parents' living room, staring aimlessly at the television screen – with the sound turned down low –  discovering just how out of touch he’d gotten with Japanese pop culture. His mother, wearing a cocktail dress and a faux-fur stole, stood at the mirror over the mantelpiece, putting in her earrings while sending him reproachful glances over her shoulder, which he ignored with the ease of long practice.

“You could still get dressed,” his mother said, finally, when the silence – evidently – became too much for her to bear, “you know they’ve invited you, too.” She uncapped her lipstick, proceeding to touch up her already-flawless makeup.  

“Don’t care, won’t go,” Aomine replied, pointedly forgoing the use of sentences, entirely.

“Dai-ki,” his mother’s eyebrows arched, in the mirror. She sounded appalled, as though he’d said something outrageous. “Fine, stay at home. Look through those newspapers I left you. Apply for a job.”

Aomine rolled his eyes.

“Ah, leave him alone,” Aomine’s father emerged from the master bedroom, threading his tie through his collar, and gave Aomine a genial nod. “Do I need to remind you to stay safe?”

Aomine shrugged. “It could bear repeating,” he said, “if I recall: keep the doors and windows locked, don’t let strangers into the house, if you answer the phone don’t say you’re home alone, try not to accidentally burn the house down – ”

His father chuckled. “Great,” he said, as if Aomine was thirteen instead of thirty. “We’re off, then.”

In their wake, Aomine stared at the television screen a while longer. He considered ordering in a pizza, and started to reach for his phone to look up the pizza place’s number, before deciding he wanted to pick it up himself. After all, he hadn’t really left the house since getting in – in accordance with his self-mummification program – and besides, if he remembered correctly, there was a movie rental store by the pizza place he had in mind. Pizza and a movie – it sounded like a great way to spend his evening.

He hunted for his jacket and a clean pair of socks – being mid-March, it was still (mildly) chilly outside – and fished his wallet out from inside his still-not-unpacked backpack. The walk was short – ten minutes, and he could have made it in five, but he walked slowly, the jacket hood secure under his chin, nose tip reddening. He went to the pizza place first, placed his order and wandered into the rental store to wait. He looked through the shelves rather aimlessly, having walked in with nothing particular in mind.

There was an ad on the counter, under the glass, for a film that had come out the November three years  before: a winter romantic comedy, the tagline declared – but what really caught Aomine’s eye was the name of the actor playing the lead role, listed under the title, in gold capitals:

STARRING KISE RYOUTA

And Aomine traced his fingertips over the letters: KISE RYOUTA, and he looked around for someone – the clerk, another customer – to say out loud, hey – hey, you know, this guy – I know him, he was my friend – and a wave of nostalgia washed over him, along with a strange sense of discontent at having thought _was my friend_ instead of _is my friend_ , like _I played basketball_ , in place of _I play_ –

“Excuse me, sir,” the clerk’s voice cut through Aomine’s reverie, bland, impersonal, “is there something I can help you with?”

Aomine cleared his throat. “This movie,” he said, and tapped his fingernail over the glass, “I’d like to rent it.”

 

 

 

When Kise first appeared on screen – the first time Aomine saw him (other than in stationary pictures on social media) in over a decade – Aomine felt his breath catch somewhere in his throat. He would have pretended not to notice, but his chest went tight, too, in a strange funny way he couldn’t quite blame on the pizza, greasy as it was, because it was accompanied by a thick wistful melancholy, like looking at an old photograph of a long-dead, cherished relative.

It was not a bad movie, as far as movies went. It wasn’t particularly memorable either: two-dimensional cast of characters, highly predictable storyline. Even the jokes fell flat, to Aomine’s disappointment. He supposed it was his fault for picking up a movie on a whim, without reading any reviews or critiques, but – he couldn’t bring himself to _regret_ the decision, either – because, despite the lackluster direction, Kise shone in practically every scene he was in – at least, until the script tripped him up.

Although Kise’s natural charisma was not enough to offset the film’s weaknesses, at least, not entirely, he seemed to have done an excellent job with what little he had to work with, Aomine supposed, consideringly, to himself around his fourth slice of pizza. A good enough job that Aomine was still watching, even though he knew how the movie was going to end.

Of course, Aomine did not notice how that natural charisma had changed from the heartfelt exuberance of the dazzling teenager he had known – it had tempered with age and the weight of new experiences, experiences that brought out the set of his now well-defined jaw, the strong, clear contours of his nose, broadened his shoulders and narrowed his waist, deepened the lines around his wide, thickly-lashed eyes.

Aomine did not notice any of that at all – or, at least, he was pretending he did not. After all, Kise had always been pretty. It was nothing _new_. That was the note the film ended on, too, having brought nothing new to the table, either. Kise’s character married the love interest, and was presumed to live happily ever after.

 

 

 

The following evening found Aomine back at the rental store.  He returned the movie he’d borrowed, and when the clerk asked if he could help Aomine with anything else, Aomine said,

“What other films star this actor?”, almost without thinking about it.

He left the store with nine other DVDs, and the niggling feeling that he might be experiencing the beginnings of a problem.

 

 

 

Working through the DVDs took – to his (chagrined) surprise – much less time than he had been expecting. Not all the films were romantic comedies. Naturally, his former teammate was a versatile actor. He’d made at least a movie a year over the last seven years – two the year that first romcom Aomine watched came out. Fortunately, not all were as bad as that romcom – but Aomine decided his favorite was Kise as Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Kadokawa Pictures’ historical feature _The Unifier_. It was, as far as Aomine was concerned, the perfect role for him: wily, manipulative, single-minded and utterly charismatic. It fit so well with Aomine’s memories of school-age Kise he could almost believe that Kise hadn’t changed at all, that behind the make-up and the armor he was – impossibly – the same person.

At one point during his marathon, he considered how _weird_ and _creepy_ he was being – not because he was watching Kise’s movies – but that he was using them as a proxy – a substitute for the act of getting to know his friend.  He probably would have carried on in the same manner, if it weren’t for the last of the nine movies he had rented, which, as it turned out, was Kise’s film debut: another romantic comedy, only marginally better than the other had been, with a similarly formulaic plot and lifeless directing. The biggest difference, to Aomine’s eyes, was Kise – ten years younger, bright and fresh-faced, with the vivacious sparkle in his brilliant golden eyes that Aomine remembered so well.

If that on its own did not make the movie memorable, then the fact that Horihata Mai was one of Kise’s costars definitely would have.

It happened like this:

There was a scene – later, Aomine would refer to it as The Scene, in his head – the morning after Kise’s character – thirty minutes into the movie and Aomine could not bring himself to call him by name – slept with an older woman, a hooker – dark-haired, big-breasted, Aomine’s type of girl, really, and she was oddly familiar in a way he could not put his finger on. The camera had, oddly, been placed at her back, and did not afford a view of her face – and the scene (the morning after) depicted Kise’s character walking the woman down to the front of the apartment building. A few lines of unheard dialogue, and then the hooker pressed her lips, briefly, to Kise’s cheek and turned around – towards the camera, bringing in large dark eyes and a perpetual bedhead into view – and Aomine heard himself gasp:

And the camera followed Horihata Mai down the street until she disappeared around the corner.

 

 

 

“Seriously, Dai-chan,” Momoi sounded utterly exasperated, which she had every right to, considering this was the first time Aomine had called her since getting back, “yes, it was her last film role. I don’t know why you’re so surprised, considering you didn’t even know she _had_ a career in movies.”

“And you don’t know what happened,” Aomine pressed, leaning back in his chair and fingering the edge of his curtain.

“You’re assuming I care,” Momoi’s voice went muffled, as though coming from a great distance, before coming back into focus. He could hear the sound of crying, in the background. “No, but the rumor is her contract was ended. Is there a reason you’re so interested?”

Aomine said, “not in particular,” and he leaned forward, elbows settling on his knees, suddenly nervous, “hey, Satsuki – have you got Kise’s number. Could I have it?”

There was a moment of silence, during which the crying abruptly stopped. “Yes,” Momoi said, “I’ll text it to you; just give me a moment, okay?” She paused. “Is there a reason you’re asking for it, now? Or wait: not in particular, right?”

Aomine cleared his throat. “That’s right.”

He could hear the smile in Momoi's voice when she replied, “of course. Take care, now, Dai-chan.”

 

 

 

He had thought that he would give Kise a call as soon as he received Momoi’s text. Instead, another week elapsed before he mustered up the courage to dial the number. He filled the time watching and re-watching the film, pausing and rewinding to the beginning of The Scene every time, as if it would change, somehow.

It didn’t, of course.

When he finally called Kise, it was seven o’ clock on a Friday evening. He was alone at home; his parents were at another dinner party, at the South Korean embassy, this time. He sat in the living room – the television was off – punching in the numbers slowly, strangely nervous, like a flustered teenaged boy with a crush. It did not occur to him to think that maybe the description was pertinent in more ways than one. He raised the phone to his ear.

It rang and rang, tinny in his ear, until the call was diverted to voice mail.

Aomine hesitated a moment, before clearing his throat. “Hey, Kise,” he began, “it’s – Aomine. I – well, I’m back in Tokyo. I – know you’re busy, but. I was thinking we could – meet up, talk maybe, if you’ve got the time. Hope you’re doing okay.”

Kise called back an hour later, when Aomine was scrounging about in the kitchen, debating the merits of eating in versus eating out. He was mortified at the way his heartrate speeded up at the sound of his ringtone, and how quickly he’d jumped for his phone.

“Hi,” he exhaled into the speaker, hoping he did not sound as breathless as he felt, “Kise?”

“Isn’t it funny,” Kise replied, his voice light, “how we never happened to call each other by our first names, Aominecchi?”

At the sound of the ridiculous nickname – Aominecchi – at the way it seemed to roll off his tongue as easily as it ever did – Aomine’s heart _swelled_ , almost literally, by the way his chest felt suddenly too small. He cleared his throat, attempting, vainly, to sound nonchalant.

“Yeah,” he said, and refrained, just barely, from adding, _it’s never felt formal to me_.

“Listen,” Kise said. He was probably somewhere busy, and with really bad reception, judging by the way his voice crackled, in the middle of words, “I’m a little occupied right now, but I’m getting off in half-an-hour. What do you say I swing by and we go get something to eat? I’m _famished_.”

It sounded almost too good to be true, Aomine thought; he had been spared the responsibility of suggesting the meet-up, and therefore avoided the very real possibility of being rejected.  

“Sure,” he said, and told Kise his parents’ address.

 

 

 

As promised, Kise ‘swung by’ forty-five minutes later, by which time Aomine had swapped his t-shirt for a cleaner one, hunted down his jacket, and was sitting in the foyer, trying not to chew the last of his badly-bitten nails off. He waited, a beat, before making his way down the stairs to the front of the building.

Kise was waiting in his car – a very shiny black Porsche – sitting in the driver’s seat with his windows rolled down – and for a moment, Aomine stood there, on the pavement, and just _looked_ ; took in the sweeping gold hair, the way his mouth turned down, at the corners, in repose –

Till Kise looked up, his face breaking out into a smile, something radiant and heart-achingly familiar, if not as exuberant as Aomine remembered. Kise waved. “Well, come on!” he called, “don’t just stand there!”

As Aomine ducked into the car he said, “I thought you’d have a chauffeur driving you around.”

 “I see you’ve been keeping up,” Kise said, tilting his head and shooting Aomine a grin. “Only for work purposes. You know I like to keep a measure of independence, right?”

Up close, Aomine came to two realizations: a) that the camera did not do Kise justice and b) it was strangely disorienting, meeting this older, more mature Kise, like seeing two slightly different images superimposed over the other: now, and then.

He drove one-handed, eyes fixed on the road. His other hand rested, loosely, on the gearstick.

“You know,” Kise said, “I kept up with you, too, but it seems I lost track. Last I knew, you were playing for the Lakers. When did you get back?”

“Earlier this month, actually.”

The look Kise threw him was careful, searching. “You stopped playing.”

Aomine ran his hand through his hair. “It – wasn’t something I planned.”

“I’m sorry,” Kise said, voice quiet.

“Did you never play after high school?”

Kise laughed. “Aominecchi,” he said, brightly, “do you remember how I busted my leg in first year? It never got better.  I was told if I played the way I did it would aggravate the injury beyond repair.”

“So,” Aomine said, cautiously, “movies, huh?”

“I modeled for a while,” Kise pulled the car to a stop in front of an upscale izakaya and turned the key in the ignition. “Still do, sometimes.” He half-turned in his seat, striking a pose with long-practiced ease: eyes hooded, head tilted just so, lips pulled back over a smile that managed to look winsome and seductive at the same time. Aomine could imagine the sparkling background behind him, with his name and stats listed in a ridiculously over-the-top font.

KISE RYOUTA. MODEL, ACTOR. CHARM FACTOR: 120%.

 “They tell me I’ve still _got it_.”

It looked too perfect to be real.

Aomine bit back the scathing retort that jumped to his lips. He settled for a less-charged, “yeah,” instead.

 

 

 

Mai-chan didn’t come up in conversation until much later, when Kise was dropping Aomine at home. Despite Aomine’s protests, Kise walked him all the way up to the apartment, and waited while Aomine fished for his house keys and opened the door.

“You never told me,” Kise said, casually, the way he’d said most everything all night, his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, “which movie (of mine) was your favorite.”

There was something in his tone, though – and in the way he caught Aomine’s eyes when he asked the question – that made Aomine think he was more invested in the answer than he otherwise let on. It made him smile.

“ _The Unifier_ ,” he said, just as casual. “You look good with a katana – though I probably didn’t need to tell you that.”

Kise’s face lit up. “You liked it? You know – I used to tell myself that if I could get you to watch just one movie I made it would be _Unifier_. I wasn’t sure you’d like any of the others.”

Aomine couldn’t help but feel a little flattered by the thought of Kise pondering his film preferences – even if it probably wasn’t true. “Aw, I don’t know. You looked really cute in that first romantic comedy,” he said, “what is it like, working with all those girls? Have you got a favorite co-star?”

“Oh, that.” Maybe it was Aomine’s imagination, but Kise’s face seemed strained, somehow, but only for a moment. “Jealous, Aominecchi?”

“Maybe,” Aomine said, carefully careless.  “She was my first love, you know.”

“Love isn’t synonymous for lust, you know, Aominecchi,” Kise’s molten gold eyes were shuttered. “It’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you some other time, hmm?”

He gave Aomine a calculated wink and a wave, making his way down the hall.

“Wait,” Aomine called, realizing, belatedly, the implications of what he’d said, “there’s going to be another time?”

 

 

 

Another time turned out to be a Giants ballgame a week-and-a-half later at the Tokyo Dome, on cloudless Tuesday afternoon.

“I’ve got an extra ticket,” Kise explained, over the phone.

“I don’t give a crap about baseball,” Aomine said, still half-asleep.

“It’s good to diversify, Aominecchi,” Kise chided, sounding too chipper, as he was wont to do. “It’s after twelve. Shouldn’t you be up already?”

“I’m _retired_ ,” Aomine grumbled, setting off a peal of golden laughter, on the other end. If he could hear that laugh all day, he thought, exhaustion apparently divesting him of his inhibitions, then that was incentive enough to get out of bed.

Afterwards, they talked over burgers and fries – Aomine picked out the pickles in his – their fingers and chins shiny with grease.

“The showbiz isn’t all it’s made it out to be,” Kise said, and,

“Would you play one-on-one with me sometime,” Aomine blurted out,

To which Kise replied, “are you _flirting_ with me, Aominecchi?”

 

 

 

Their meet-ups – Aomine could not bring himself to refer to them as _dates_ – grew more frequent, becoming a once-a-week ‘thing’. Aomine saw the inside of Kise’s apartment, a penthouse in an Azabu skyscraper. Kise, he told Aomine, was happier, now that Aomine was around.

“You’re a breath of fresh air, Aominecchi,” he said.

Eventually, they did play one-on-one, one Friday night on a street court a block down from Kise’s penthouse apartment. It was a decidedly slower game than it would have been if they were both younger and wholer, but satisfying, nonetheless, in a way words just couldn’t be. Aomine had always communicated better with a ball in his hands, where his fakes called _come and get me_ and his dunks yelled _are you watching_ and his formless shots screamed _I could be the only one (for you)_.

He imagined Kise’s basketball to be his reply, his _I’ve already got you_ and _I never stopped watching_ and _you are you are you are_.

(“Dai-chan,” Momoi told him, “you need to get yourself a job.”)

Afterward, he lay sprawled on Kise’s black leather couch, in a pair of Kise’s sweatpants and one of Kise's shirts, aimlessly flipping through TV channels. The door to Kise’s bedroom opened, and Kise emerged from inside, toweling his hair off. He paused at the end of the sofa, looking down into Aomine’s face, a half-smile on his.

“Can I get you a drink, Aominecchi?”

“I'm surprised; you don’t have a home bar, big-shot actor,” Aomine observed, craning his head over the armrest to catch Kise’s eye.

Kise laughed. “I’m not enough of a drinker,” he said as he pulled the refrigerator door open, “for it to be a good investment.”

“Yeah?” Aomine said, and marveled at how easy and familiar the banter was, as if they’d never grown apart.

“Yeah,” Kise set two cans of beer and a pair of glasses on the coffee table, “but I _can_ provide tumblers, so you don’t have to drink out of the can.” He nudged Aomine’s leg with his knee. “Move over.”

Aomine shifted towards the end of the couch, making space for Kise to sit next to him. Instead of just _sitting_ , however, Kise slumped against Aomine, his head nestling on Aomine’s bent knee. Aomine’s mind immediately cranked into overdrive.

 _An accident_ , he thought, _it doesn’t mean anything_. Kise had always been touchy-feely; physical affection came incredibly naturally to him. The weight of Kise’s head was warm against his leg, his hair prickly through the fabric of Aomine’s sweatpants.

“So – about Mai-chan,” he began, after several moments of silence.

Kise tilted his chin up. “Aominecchi, you know romance in movies is scripted, right?”

“She hasn’t been in any photo-shoots since, either,” Aomine mused. He was met with silence, filled with the faint sounds of Kise’s TV set, playing unheeded. Background noise. 

“Kise?”

Kise, when Aomine looked at him, was fiddling with the clasp on his watch, eyes downcast.

“Sometimes people come on really strong, you know, Aominecchi,” Kise said, finally, after clasping and unclasping his watch several times. “She retired, because you’re wondering. No, she didn’t choose to. Yes, I might have had a hand in it.”

“Okay,”  Aomine said, already wishing he hadn’t asked.

“Say, Aominecchi,” Kise said businesslike, “you don’t play so bad for an old, retired guy, you know.”

Aomine grasped the proffered lifeline, studying the permanent crinkles around Kise’s eyes, the full lines of his mouth.

“You’re not so bad, either,” he said, the hand that was resting on his knee finding its way into the thick of Kise’s hair, “for a guy who hasn’t played since he was seventeen.”

Kise hmmed, the sound reverberating in his throat and sending a shiver up Aomine’s spine. “I tried, but I couldn’t quite find the compliment in that,” he said.

“That’s because there wasn’t one.”

“You know, Aominecchi,” Kise said, “for a man who’s bitten his nails down to a quick the way you have, your hands feel surprisingly nice.”

 

 

 

The following Monday, Aomine took the train down to a high school, for a walk-in job interview, for an open coaching position. The interview was short, especially when the interviewer realized who Aomine was. It was a good feeling, knowing that he could still get a job on the basis of his name alone.

Of course, there was the fact that the name was attached to a very prestigious scoring record.

“Congratulations,” Kise said, when Aomine called him.

“How did you know I wasn’t turned down?”

He could almost _hear_ Kise roll his eyes on the other end of the line. “Aominecchi, you interviewed for a position as a _basketball coach_. No-one in their right mind would turn you down.”

Aomine’s mouth widened into an involuntary grin. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said.

“I finish shooting a little late today,” Kise said with a smile in his voice, “but celebration dinner on me, okay?”

The call ended with a little click. Aomine slipped his phone into his pocket, feeling strangely warm.

Maybe, he thought, as he turned in the direction of the train station, there was something to be said about coming home, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-fin.


End file.
